<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { padding-top: 0 ; padding-bottom: 0 }
--></style><title>linguistic modernity & power
relations</title></head><body>
<div>Dear All:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Maybe you can help me with some bibliographic information about
the area linguistic modernity and power relations?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I will be quoting from a 2004 piece by Professor Kang Nae-hûi
(Chungang University) to introduce the topic:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>--------quote--------</div>
<div>In early March of 1960, as a third grader, I attended outdoors
class in which my teacher talked about the presidential election to be
held in mid March. He gave some explanation ‹ which I don't recall ‹
as to why certain candidates should be chosen as the next president
and vice president. After his lecture he wanted to see how well
students had learned his lesson. (...) The discomfort was not that I
did not know the 'correct' answer (...). It was not only that I felt
pressured to support candidates whom others around me saw as
dictators. Rather the discomfort was because I had to reply in a
language still foreign to me. Born in Kyongsang Province, I spoke (and
am still speaking) in a regional dialect. Speaking standard Korean
involved the construction of sentences with<i> -da</i> inflections. I
don't recall my response but distinctly remember my heart pounding
with fear as I tried to speak a foreign language.</div>
<div>Today, some forty years later, I compose<i> -da</i> sentences
without difficulty. (...) Yet, to become expert, one needs more than
the basics. The ability to write<i> -da</i> sentences is thus
tantamount to the exercise of a particular kind of power. (...) In
sum, the ability to compose in the<i> -da</i> style allows one to
discern the factuality of facts, which is the domain of
professionals and experts.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div> [ And earlier in the same text:]</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Probably the most important feature of standard Korean today is
that most of its sentences end in<i> -da</i>. (...) It is surely no
coincidence that the military, one of the most important disciplinary
apparatus in Korea, has been actively involved in the obligatory use
of<i> -da</i>. (...) The present<i> -nda</i> and the past<i>
-ôttda</i> appear in many nineteenth-century documents. The<i> -da</i>
system of endings, however, never dominated. Until the 1910's, it
appeared with far less frequency than<i> -ra</i> endings (...). Once
it came to dominate modern fiction,<i> -da</i> started to spread to
literary criticism, academic papers, and newspaper editorials in the
1920s. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, it had come to dominate the
range of modern discourse.</div>
<div>-------End of quote-------</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Interestingly, you see the very same phenomenon in South and
South East Asian languages (e.g. Thai, Burmese, Khmer language), but I
found only little literature on the issue when it comes to Korean
language. In South and Southeast Asia you will see that minority
languages (or better, languages spoken by ethnic minorities) in these
areas have "resisted" such developments. Now, that is really
interesting, I think, because it seems to be a one-to-one reflection
of power relations and resistance. This is of course a very rough
assessment, and things are, as always, a bit more complicated. But
from what I have seen so far this is the bottom line. And if you think
of Korean one might listen to North Korean radio and see how Korean
language is used in DPRK media, schools, etc. and Professor Kang's
explanation above gets further strengthened.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Now, I am not interested in the topic from a linguistic point of
view -- although some on this discussion list might well be. But
looking at the introduction of Western art and modern art production
in colonial Korea, I am looking at changes in audience/cliental,
reception, tools and patterns of cultural production in the colonial
modernization process, and how all this relates to power relations --
real and imagined ones. I therefore wonder if you can help me with
bibliographic info on the language part ... I would not know where to
start my search as I am not familiar with all the linguistic
publications. Is there anything on this topic written from a
non-technical point of view?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Thanks.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Frank</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div>--------------------------------------</div>
<div>Frank Hoffmann<br>
http://koreaweb.ws</div>
</body>
</html>